She wasn’t awake to say it, but I could almost hear her voice. If there was something real between us, why not wait two more weeks to find out? Why jeopardize my professional reputation and his crucial, final weeks before the most important event of his career and possibly life? We had all the time in the world after the games. That’s what my wonderfully rational, level-headed, middle-aged, happily-married-to-the-same-man-for-28-years mother would say.
With a sigh, I washed up and headed into my bedroom. It was just me, the treadmill, and the magazines my mother had thoughtfully amassed for me, all of which featured Chase. So, of course, I stayed up late reading stories about him.
There weren’t many personal details in them. There was a lot about his swim times, of course, and references to his intriguing persona, but other than the facts that he’d grown up in Massachusetts and he’d attended Stanford, no one seemed to have much. They all made reference to the fact that he’d nearly drowned at 14—human interest angle!—but no one had captured the full story. It was all lined up for me to come in and hit a home run.
There were a few references to Chase as a heartbreaker. The articles made him sound like a sought-after, elusive ladies’ man. No one could catch him, in or out of the pool. Was I missing something? Or was that just hype? Either way, I didn’t like the feeling that I was one in a million, a face in the adoring, worshipping crowd. I felt so removed from the intimacy we’d shared. And I missed him.
But then I heard from him the following afternoon. He texted me another photo, this one a close-up of a lobster holding a beer. Or, at least, a lobster made to look like he was holding one, with his claw wrapped around a bottle.
Emma: Nice lobster
Chase: That’s lob-stah. I’m back in Massachusetts.
Emma: You don’t even have an accent.
Chase: Yes, I’m trying to work on that and I’d appreciate your help.
And, just like that, he put a smile back on my face. A few minutes later, it broadened even wider. I got another photo, very much to my liking. It featured Chase shirtless, all of his perfectly defined muscles on excellent display.
Chase: See how buff your boy is?
Wait, who’d sent that? It clearly wasn’t Chase. I wanted to thank them. What eye candy. I clicked to enlarge it to full screen. The wind was in Chase’s hair, his head turned to the side with a classic strong profile as he kicked it on what looked like a deck. Those shoulders, so broad and strong. Had I really rested my head on them the day before yesterday?
Chase: Sorry, my buddy Liam got the phone for a second.
Emma: Does he frequently take shirtless photos of you?
Chase: Only when he’s trying to piss me off. So, yes.
I loved the thought of him goofing off with friends. He needed that, some time to relax before the entire world turned its attention on him in the pool. I wondered if he was seeing his family as well. He hadn’t mentioned them, only that he was at his father’s house. I somehow got the sense that he wasn’t that close with family.
I knew the bond I had with my parents was much closer than most, and I felt grateful for it. I was their only child, a fact they mentioned frequently, with affection. And emotion, since I was headed to Rio. My mom, in particular, warned me repeatedly about the Zika virus. She wanted healthy grandbabies.
“Wear long-sleeved shirts and pants,” my father advised.
“Or just stay indoors!” my mother took it a step further.
Together, they sent me off on Monday with so much insect repellent spray I thought I had a bottle for every day I’d be in Brazil.
“I know this must be a wild ride you’re on.” Mom hugged me at security, wiping a tear away from her eye. “You’re going to do a great job.”
“Call us.” Dad hugged me, too.
“And text!”
They waved at me as I headed into the long line. They were both wearing matching Team USA 2016 Swimming T-shirts. No one ever accused my parents of being cool. But they were awesome.
“Emma!” my mom called after me. “Enjoy every second!”
§
The hotel in Atlanta looked fancier than the one we’d stayed at in San Antonio. The high-ceilinged lobby featured a gigantic chandelier. The marble floor gleamed. No line to wait in, a staff member greeted me right away and pulled up my reservation.
“Right next door to Mr. Carter, as requested,” she informed me as she handed me my room card.
Right next door? I had a feeling I knew who had made that request. A shiver of anticipation traveled down my spine. I was in for quite a week.
CHAPTER 10
Chase
It was good to see Liam and some of his buddies. They lived there year-round, not like the wealthy seasonal residents. They were the ones who kept things running for everyone else, firefighters and police officers and construction workers. They were always a fun group, easy to hang with, no heavy talk, plenty of joking around.
One of them had gotten married recently. That surprised me, but I guess he was 27, prime marrying time. Almost none of my teammates were married, but a lot of them were younger than me. Some of them were teenagers. At 26, I was still considered right in my prime for swimming, but by the next games I wouldn’t be. That wasn’t the case for a lot of the people I spent all day, every day with. To a lot of them, this Olympics was their first of two or even three attempts.
To me, this was it. And then it would be over. That was why it felt good to spend the weekend with a bunch of people who weren’t obsessed with the Olympics. It was a good reminder that there was a whole life outside of my small, intense world.
I still thought about Emma the whole time. Her laughter, her sweet shy nervousness. And those moments when she lost her reticence under my touch. Her soft skin and her supple, flexible limbs that I wanted wrapped around me. I dreamed about her at night and tried not to talk too much about her during the day. But Liam still picked up on it.
“What’s the deal with this Emma?” he asked me Saturday night as we hung out on his deck having some beers. Root beer where I was concerned.
“Emma who?” I tried. He just looked at me. Damn, I hadn’t even been there 24 hours and I’d already blown my cover.
“She’s a physical therapist, from Florida. Traveling with us for the next three weeks. Working with me until the games are over.”
“Working with you?” He cocked an eyebrow. I raised mine in response. “Interesting.”
Since he’d elected himself captain of the team devoted to getting Chase involved in things other than swimming, he liked the idea a whole lot. Which was why he did asinine things like sneak a picture of me and text it to Emma. And tell me how much he was looking forward to meeting her in Rio so he could have a good chat with her. I knew what that meant. He was issuing a warning. I needed to lock things down with her by then, or he’d play fairy godfather and lock us together in a supply closet. Too late, I’d already tried that move. Only I forgot to lock the door.
I talked to my parents over the weekend as well, but didn’t see them. Dad was in New York where he spent a lot of time. Mom was hosting a garden party on Sunday and had wanted me to come out to her home in Wellesley. Neither of them still lived in the house where I’d grown up. That had been sold after the divorce.
“Thanks, Mom, but I can’t make it.” The last thing I wanted to do was stand around with a bunch of her friends making small talk about my chances for Olympic gold. Even my mom and I seemed hard-pressed to get far past small talk together. Once we got beyond agreeing it had been a hot July so far, yes, I was still training nearly every second of every day and, yes, her wrist was healing nicely after a fall a couple of months ago, we were left without much to say.
“Met anyone nice lately?” she tried, a question I always brushed aside. I didn’t have time to meet anyone nice. I mean, I met women all the time, but I didn’t have the time to find out what they were like. Except this time, I had.
“I’ll tell you about it after the games,”
I surprised her by answering.
“Really?” she asked, clearly intrigued.
“When do you arrive again?” I got her telling me about logistics, successfully diverting her attention. I steadfastly refused to get involved in the “I want to see you but I don’t want to see your father,” discussion. I’d had enough of all of that drama. They’d have to sort out their own shit to figure out how to be in the same place at the same time. Their son was in the Olympics. Deal with it.
My dad just wanted to talk to me about swim times. He considered himself quite the coach, despite having barely spent any time in the water. He had my build—or I guess it was more accurate to say that I had his—so he probably could have been a top-tier swimmer had he gone for it, but he’d done more traditional sports in school like baseball and football. In fact, he’d fought my devotion to swimming, especially after the accident.
“Swimmers don’t get the girls,” he’d tried on me when I’d been a young teenager. He was right in New England at least, where swimming was largely an indoor, out-of-sight pursuit for the socially awkward. It wasn’t until I went to some summer training camps and then Stanford that I realized how huge swimming was in other parts of the country.
But now that I was at the top of my game, my father was all about securing that number one spot. Google “competitive” and I was pretty sure a picture of my dad would come up. I guessed I’d inherited that from him as well. I’d had more than one person tell me I was a real chip off the old block. But what if I didn’t like that block too much? I didn’t exactly walk around with a lot of adolescent angst, hating on my father, blaming him for his imperfections. He’d given me a lot, paying for private school, team fees, the best coaches and training programs. I earned income from sponsorships now, but he’d given me my start and I’d always be grateful to him for that.
But I didn’t exactly see him enjoying life. He always seemed in a rush. He’d torn through two marriages, saw me, his only child, only a couple times a year, and was always talking a mile a minute into his earpiece while simultaneously texting and emailing about confidential, high profile deals. You know that Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol? I couldn’t help but see my father like the ghost of Christmas future. I could end up exactly like him if I didn’t watch myself.
He didn’t have a bad life. He was a well-educated, world-traveled man who’d amassed a broad network and sizeable fortune through financial ventures. But to me, his life seemed kind of empty. Most of the people around him were either blowhards or kiss-ups, and the women he spent time with were mainly interested in his money. It wasn’t as if I had a grand plan for life post-Olympics, but I hoped there’d somehow be more to it. I wanted to do something meaningful and fulfilling. I just didn’t know what that was yet.
Over the weekend, I talked to my coach, too. He kept in touch with me, sending texts, calling to check in. He didn’t want anything fucking things up for me—or him. Everything was riding on Rio.
Yeah, I knew that. Which was why I flew into Atlanta early Monday morning, checking myself in ahead of schedule. And making sure Emma would be staying in a suite right next to mine. Adjoining, in fact, if she wanted to unlock that door. Her call. And I’d do everything in my power to persuade her to do exactly that.
Coach was one floor below me. I knew because he texted me his suite number and told me to come find him pronto. I headed down and fastened my seatbelt for what I knew would be one hell of a motivational talk.
“Chase, come on in.” He opened the door and, oh shit, he had the other two main coaches with him as well. Three on one. They must have something they wanted to talk with me about.
“Have a seat,” he gestured to the vacant chair. I felt like I was in an intervention.
They got right to it. Apparently in San Antonio I’d seemed off. Not myself. Distracted.
“This isn’t the time to mess around with anything new, Chase.” My head coach warned me. “Keep it consistent. Don’t rock the boat. Stay focused. We’re almost there.”
I nodded, hearing his words but chafing slightly under the constraints. I knew they had my best interest in mind. I wanted to win gold every bit as much as them. But I felt like that racehorse again, only this time they were trying to put the blinders on me. It felt different when I chose the blinders myself, narrowing my own focus in singular pursuit of swimming. But when they told me I needed to do it? I felt my middle finger wanting to crank up at them.
Why did my teammates get to fuck around with anything that moved? I didn’t even ask the question before mentally answering myself. Because it didn’t matter to them. With a lot of the guys I swam with, fucking was like any other bodily function. The thought of any woman getting under their skin was laughable.
What was happening between me and Emma was different.
“Yeah, you got it.” I gave my coaches the assurances they wanted. Head in the game, eyes on the prize and all that. They seemed satisfied. It wasn’t as if I’d been caught out partying with hookers or pulled over with a DUI. I just clearly had more on my mind than usual. But even they couldn’t claim that it had negatively affected my swimming. I’d been like lightning in the pool in San Antonio. They were simply worried that it might affect my future performance.
And once they brought it up, I got a little worried, too. What if I was making a huge mistake by letting myself get distracted this close to the most major competition of my life? My one shot to prove myself to the world. Maybe Emma was knocking me off my game?
The second I saw her standing at the door of my hotel room, I knew that wasn’t true. Radiant and smiling up at me, her toffee-colored hair tumbled over her shoulders, golden flecks dancing in her light brown eyes. She wasn’t taking the wind out of my sails. She was breathing new life into me, giving me a real reason to do all this besides acting like a mindless machine. She made me feel alive.
“Hey.” I let her into my room, Monday afternoon. Should I kiss her hello? I paused for a second, looking down at her, so fit and gorgeous. Aw, fuck it. Wrapping my arms around her, I drew her to me and kissed her as deeply as I’d missed her. A whole hell of a lot. She paused for a moment, maybe hesitant or maybe just surprised. I’d surprised myself, to be honest. I wasn’t usually big on displays of emotion. But Emma was making me break all my rules.
Her lips felt so sweet and warm and soft. She brought her hands up to my shoulders, tentative at first, then pulling me closer and wrapping around my muscles.
“Chase!” she gasped when I dipped down to her throat, giving her a kiss that became a lick and a light suck.
“I told you I wanted to kiss you in person.” I dialed it back slightly, still holding her, but moving up to give her a more restrained kiss on her head. “Good to see you again.”
“Good to see you, too,” she agreed. Reaching up, she ran her fingers through my hair. I suppressed a groan of pleasure. “You cut it.”
Funny she noticed, I think the guy had only taken off about a quarter of an inch. I kept my hair short, as did most swimmers. With the amount of sweat and chlorine and showering that went on in my life, there was not much time for styling of locks.
Much as we may have wanted, we didn’t have time for a long hello. We had a group dinner with the whole crew, only this time no open bar, no dance floor. Lots of sitting and listening to motivational speeches as we picked at plates of dry chicken, veggies and rice. But Emma was sitting next to me, so that gave me something to think about.
She wore a short, athletic skirt that skimmed the top of her thighs. It was all I could do not to drift over my hand under the table and run a finger along her smooth skin. I wanted to feel her part her legs for me again, hear the sounds of pleasure I could coax out of her. I still hadn’t felt her come for me. Not yet. I didn’t want to wait another minute.
But the dinner went on and on. And even I knew I couldn’t finger Emma at a table with all my teammates and the entire Olympic crew in the middle of a hotel conference room. We’d already picked two bad, publ
ic, easy-to-interrupt locations for getting into it. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake a third time.
And afterward, when I finally thought we were free to go, no. Coach called yet another meeting, this time with the men’s relay swimmers. Really? Was this his new technique, killing us by talking us to death? But I sat there and listened to the value of teamwork, the importance of getting ourselves in sync not just physically but mentally as well. Yup, sync, got it. Now can I go?
After we hugged it out, because, yes, coach honestly brought us in for a group hug, I was off like a kid on the last day of school. Fuck waiting for the elevator, I took the stairs.
She opened the door at my first knock, quickly, as if she’d been waiting for me. I’m not sure if the door closed fully behind me before I had her in my arms, devouring her.
“Emma,” I murmured, running my hands down her body, her slender waist, her hips. Cupping her ass, I brought her against me. I wanted no space between us, no clothes, no barriers at all.
Sweeping her up into my arms, I carried her over to the couch, my mouth never leaving her body, her neck, her cheeks, her strawberry lips. I sucked and nibbled and kissed her like I’d been wanting to do since the moment I met her, and she did it right back. But I still felt the need to be a gentleman. The last time together, she’d been shaking hard in my arms, confused and scared. I never wanted her to feel frightened around me. No matter how crazy I felt about her, I could keep things in check if that’s what she wanted.
I sat down, bringing her with me onto my lap. She settled right in, fitting as perfectly as I’d always known she would. Her ass rested right on me and she wiggled a little, getting comfortable, making me as hard as a rock. I brought my hands to her waist and forced myself to slow down, just kissing her. Kissing those lips I’d literally dreamed about, how juicy they looked parted with her hushed moans escaping. How good they felt pressed against my skin.
Panting, I rested my forehead against hers. I caught her hand in mine, entwining our fingers, rubbing my thumb along her inner wrist. Her pulse was racing right along with mine.
In Deep: Chase & Emma (All In Book 1) Page 10